It’s been a busy six weeks in our household! We put a small for sale sign in the yard a few weeks ago and two days later we had an offer on our house. I’ll write a post about that in a few weeks (after we get a closing date!) And to add a little more excitement to our lives, we are (quickly) planning our first retirement trip! We’ll be off to Colorado for a 16-day adventure in early September.

Did you read Mr. Money Mustache’s latest post about the MMM World Headquarters Building? Sounds like an awesome space with some really cool features! But more importantly, it has a wonderful mission focusing on community, connecting, learning, sharing, fitness, fun, and adventure. These align pretty closely with the habits I’m building this year too: Keep moving. Eat real food (drink craft beer?) Help others. Simplify. Keep learning. Explore. Choose happiness and have fun.

MMM explained that he’s ready to host his first philanthropic event at his HQ: a free 9-day course put on by the UK-based Pop Up Business School. I read the description of the course and thought it would be a great learning opportunity. We have a rental business, yet neither of us had any kind of business training. And now that I’ve left full-time work, I have a bunch of other ideas I want to pursue!

I clicked on the link to read more and that’s when I realized that we could really do this! Both kids will be off at college, the house is under contract, and we’ve hired a property manager for our rentals – so why not see if we can get tickets? I filled out the form and a minute later, we had reservations for the course! (And it filled up fast!)

And then I started second guessing it. We should be renovating our lake house (a former rental property), so that we have somewhere to live when our house sells… But we can always rent a place for a few months if we need to. Or maybe we could use our new shed as a “tiny house” until the house is ready 😉

It’s time to take advantage of opportunities! So, we’re heading to Colorado for what we hope is an awesome adventure! And it’s time to plan fast!

I thought I’d share how we plan on travel hacking and saving money on this trip and ask for your help! I wouldn’t call us beginner travel hackers anymore, but we definitely have more to learn. We stick to what works for us – so maybe you will see other places where we can save points, miles, or dollars!

Transportation

We thought about driving but a 24-hour drive each way would put wear and tear on our vehicle and more importantly – on us! We have a Southwest Companion Pass, so we will be flying into Denver (less than an hour from Longmont.) We transferred 36,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards (which we earn from our Chase Sapphire, Ink, and Freedom cards) to our Southwest account and booked the tickets. We used a total of 35,236 points and paid $22.40 in fees for the flights for the two of us. (This still left us with over 300,000 UR points in our accounts!)

*Important point – We could have saved about 10,000 points by taking early morning flights but that involved getting up in the middle of the night to get to the airport or staying at an airport hotel at both ends of the trip. That would add an additional cost – dollars for the hotel and in sleep – which is just as important. We chose to use more of our points to take an 11:00 am flight to Denver and a 3:30 pm flight home. We felt these were the best times for us and they are also the fastest flight options both ways (about 6 hours with one stop). Don’t always choose the “cheapest” flights. They may add hours to your travel day and cost you more in the end.

Parking at an off-airport lot is $65.00. (If we picked the early morning flight, we could have booked an “stay, fly, & park” package in an airport hotel for $99.) Uber and Lyft just started in our area too! I checked the estimate for a round-trip airport ride and it would have been about $100. We’ll just park offsite and save some money.

We’ll need a rental car too. We usually choose a compact/economy car, but we want some extra room (and seats that fold down) – so we’re thinking about a mid-size SUV. I compared the rates on a few sites and the cheapest I could find was $527. BUT I also checked the Chase UR portal and the price was $510 or 34,000 points or a combination of points/$. Since we have so many UR points, we will use points and pay $0 out of pocket for the rental!

We haven’t booked this yet because we are also thinking of a mini-van over the mid-size SUV. That would give us even more room if we had bad weather. Any thoughts on that idea? It would cost us about 23,000 more UR points BUT we have plenty of those too!

When we thought about driving to Colorado, we figured we would camp most of the trip. After we decided to fly, we looked at AirBNB, VRBO, and Home Away. There are some great options, but then we decided that we could probably camp even if we fly (and use AirBNB’s/hotels as back-ups if needed!)

It won’t be easy – but it will certainly be an adventure! Since we are flying Southwest, we can each bring two suitcases (for free) and a carry-on. That should be plenty of space to pack what we need and we’ll buy (or maybe borrow) a few things when we arrive. I’ll detail more on this in a future post. (We’ll need to spend some money on gear and maybe some shoes – but these are things we’ll be able to use in the future too.)

We plan on camping in a great recreation area about 11 miles from Longmont. Tent sites will be $20/night the first week (in-season) and $15/night the second week (off-peak). This will be our “base camp” during most of the trip. We’re estimating $200 for camping here.

The first weekend will probably be spent exploring Rocky Mountain National Park. We may bring our gear or rent a small cabin for a night. The second weekend will likely include a night in Denver at a hotel and two nights of camping near Steamboat Mountain and Strawberry Park Hot Springs. (If you have other ideas of what we should see – please share!!) We’re estimating another $250 for the weekend nights.

Lodging Estimate – $450

Food/Beverage

This is the category where we are likely to spend the most money. And that’s not because we enjoy eating out that much. With just a cooler and a small camp stove, we will try to just keep it simple for most meals. If you have any suggestions here – share away!

There are at least 20 craft breweries in the Longmont area, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find some happy hour fun. And it’s important to support local businesses too! 😊

We are going to estimate $50/day here or $800 for the trip. And that’s more than we spend in a month for a family of four. (And remember, we’d still be spending some of this money ($200-300) if we skipped the trip and stayed home.)

Food/Beverage Estimate – $800

Activities

For the 9 days in Longmont, we’ll be spending six hours/day at the MMM Headquarters for the Pop Up Business School course. And this is free to us! (It is sponsored by MMM, Treehouse Learning, Bluehost, and Betterment Investing.)

We also plan on doing a lot of hiking and sightseeing in the area. This should all be very low/no cost. Again – if you’ve been in this area – feel free to share some places for us to visit! I know we’ll get a ton of great ideas from the local participants during the course – but we’d love your ideas too!

We may try to catch a Denver Rockies baseball game the second weekend we’re there. They have Brewfest at the park and tickets (including beer tastings and seats) are $30. A pretty reasonable night out! We’re also open to some fun summer activities at the local ski resorts. We know there will be costs to those but we’re happy to pay to do some things we’ve never done before.

Activities Estimate – $300

Miscellaneous

At this point, we haven’t really had time to think of too many things we might need to buy on or for the trip. So we’ll add $200 for this category and make notes as we think of things. (A larger Styrofoam cooler, etc…)

Miscellaneous Estimate – $200

**TOTAL ESTIMATE FOR TRIP – about $2000. Or the same amount we saved by DIY’ing the refinish of our hardwood floors last month!

Since we’ve never used a budget at home or for travel, feel free to help me with what I am missing (or over/under-estimating!) We know that camping for two weeks could be a real stretch and that we may choose to get a hotel for a night or two during the week. We have plenty of banked points/miles to cover that too.

This is going to be a great exercise in minimalism and we’re up for a fun challenge! I looked at the average weather in the area during the first part of September and it looks like sunshine and mid-80’s during the day with chilly nights in the 40’s! We’ll keep our fingers crossed because that’s our FAVORITE kind of weather!

Thanks for reading and sharing any meal ideas, travel hacks, budget thoughts, camping suggestions, or places we need to check out in Colorado! We’ll share more about our trip soon! Off to start renovations on our lake house… Not a quiet moment here this summer!

*Photo credit: tpsdave@pixabay.com because we don’t have any of our own yet 😉

A few weeks ago, Sam at Financial Samurai wrote a great post called Housing Expense Guideline for Financial Independence. I’m always amazed at the data Sam shares (and what he has kept track of for years) because we became financially independent (FI) without keeping track of anything. It worked for us because we’ve always lived well within our means and we had good financial habits. But there is a lot to be said for knowing and tracking your numbers! We might have been FI years earlier if we had…

Sam put in a survey at the end of the post and asked readers, “What percentage of your gross income do you spend on housing?” He suggested that to “start making massive financial progress” he had to get his housing costs under 10% of his gross monthly income – even though the general rule is to stay below 30%.

I’ve never calculated our housing costs as a % of our income. So I thought it might be a good thing to do. 82% of Sam’s readers were between 6% and the recommended maximum – 30% of gross income (before taxes/deductions). I guessed that we were around 30% but I really had no idea!

A few articles I read suggested including the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, and HOA fees to determine monthly housing costs. That made sense to me but I also understand there are many more costs associated with home ownership.

Current home – $1380 of expenses*/month divided by 2016 gross monthly income of $8500/month = 16.2% (*Expenses include mortgage, taxes, insurance – no HOA)

Not too bad! Especially since we don’t need to work toward FI anymore. But we also own a vacation condo that we don’t (can’t) rent out… so we need to add that in too.

According to Sam’s guideline to achieving FI feedback chart, we’re doing great (especially since the total is for two houses!)

Another interesting point to consider is that the HOA at the condo covers other expenses that would need to be added on at our current home. Our $340 HOA fee covers water, sewer, garbage, exterminator costs, exterior maintenance, heated pool, small club/exercise room, grill, large patio/table & chairs, and cable TV (that we can watch online too!) None of these are accounted for in the calculations above for our current home. (That’s a picture from our lanai – a beautiful view for what we pay!)

So even though we are doing fine, I know my job is coming to an end in less than 60 days. I started thinking about the percent of gross income spent on housing in retirement. I found a few articles from 2014 that cite a report published by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). The findings showed that retirees are warned much more about rising health care costs in retirement than housing costs.

And that is really worrisome because even though the report includes utilities and home maintenance as part of the housing costs, EBRI suggests that housing costs total between $1,000 and $1,500/month for most older adults. And some older adults don’t have much more income than that each month!

Our plan for the next 4 or 5 years involves having two homes (we’re snowbirding in winter) at a cost of about $2000/month ($1880/month in our calculations above.) And we feel very lucky to even be considering this! We worked very hard through the years, but we also understand how privileged we are.

But how low could our retirement housing costs go?

I started thinking about that when I read the articles citing the EBRI report. I’m pretty competitive too – so I dug in a little deeper 😉

I’m going to project out about 5 years (2022) to determine how low our costs could go. With both kids out of college and finding new places in the country (or world) to call “home” by 2022 – we could sell the house and keep the vacation condo as our primary home.

And as I showed in a chart in Determining How to Fund the Gap in Early Retirement – our income won’t be much different in 2022 than it was in 2016. This is because I will start collecting my pension that year. (So we’ll leave the denominator in any calculations of gross income as $8500/month in the projections.)

It would seem that my calculation above for the condo would work fine here since our projected income for 2022 will be very similar to our actual income in 2016. Our housing costs would be 5.8% of our gross monthly income. But it gets even better!

If we made our condo our primary home, we would also get a homestead property tax exemption! This would cut our (already very low) taxes almost in half – saving us around $350/year. This would bring our housing costs down to 5.5% of our gross monthly income.

But then I got thinking that my original calculations for our home expenses didn’t include ANY of the expenses that our HOA covers. It only included the mortgage, taxes, and insurance. Why would I include everything the HOA covers in one calculation (condo) but not the other (home)?

It makes sense to me to take away the HOA expense to see what our monthly housing cost as a percent of gross income would be for our condo in 2022. (From what I read on Sam’s post, he didn’t include utilities and I’m not sure about taxes/insurance.)

Maybe I’m missing something (and there is a good chance I am!) But that is AWESOME news to us if we’re right. (We know our HOA fees can go up and that we can have special assessments. Mr. MSD is on the condo board and we have strong condo board financials too. But that is similar to having a major maintenance need on your house too – right?)

So just how low can our retirement housing costs go as a % of our gross monthly income?

Under 2% low!

We’re not sure that we will ever live in the vacation condo as our primary home, but you can certainly see why it might be a really smart decision! It is paid off, it has very low taxes, the HOA covers almost everything (except electric and the inside structures), and for now – our insurance premiums are very low.

We chose real estate that met our needs – not exceed them and it paid off big. Satisficing over optimizing all the way.

Things may change dramatically over the next five years, but knowing that we can have insanely low housing costs in an amazing setting just a couple miles from the #1 beach in the country? We’ll definitely keep it as an option!

It’s the April Fool’s edition of the Saturday Share Day and it’s been a much better week than last week! The website hack was no joke and it took up a lot of my time. The site is fine now (almost too secure at times) – but I’m not complaining. I’ll write a post about the hack soon, but I had to let the whole thing go for a little while because it was definitely stressful!

Instead, I wrote about how we plan on funding the gap in early retirement. Most of the comments supported our plan, but a few still questioned why we would count on pensions (or Social Security). Our pensions will add up to over $70K/year (when I can collect in five years). If we ignore the pensions, I wouldn’t be able to leave full-time work this year. I’d have to work for another decade or more to get the 4% rule to work. And that isn’t happening. We’ll take our chances at this point in life and plan for a reduction rather than our pensions ever being eliminated.

With the hack over, I was able to catch up on some reading. I hope you enjoy some great posts from this week!

Fritz over at The Retirement Manifesto had a great guest post from ESI Money about the importance of having something to retire to. I am going to really have to push myself to “try things, lots of things” as ESI suggests. I could definitely see just doing more of what I like to do. It will be time to test those boundaries! (Maybe I can even try making an infographic someday!)

Thias at It Pays Dividends wrote a post called Don’t Bunt. It aligns with the idea of pushing boundaries. Small goals are certainly helpful but a really big goal and a lot of passion can change your life!

The Green Swan wrote a post describing his thoughts on their ideal retirement lifestyle and focused on projected expenses. Since we have never budgeted or tracked expenses, I was happy to see JW’s numbers. They were in line with Physician on Fire’s projections too. Our very conservative estimates were similar, but we will be have a better idea about our retirement expenses in 2018.

Speaking of expenses, check out this post about having a hustling mentality by Holly over at Club Thrifty. She learned of a young woman in the neighborhood who was working to pay off college expenses in a unique way! Talk about motivated! She’ll be going far in life because she took her finances seriously so early!

Apathy Ends showed a great example of how to map out your finances. I work with students who all have different learning styles. If you are a visual learner or processor, this kind of map could be a game changer for you. Look at the connections and where your money is going. Can you automate something and open up some “bandwidth” in your brain?

As we get ready to finish up our taxes this weekend, I’m happy to highlight this awesome post about the mortgage interest deduction by Chris over at Keep Thrifty. One of the comments describes it best (by Mr. Groovy) – “Losing out on the home mortgage deduction” is the personal finance equivalent of an alternative fact. This is perhaps the best tutorial I have ever read on the bad math behind the vaunted home mortgage deduction.”

Great news! Our tenant of 22 years has found a new home! At the end of April, we take over the house and the reality of downsizing will hit us! Emily at JohnJaneDoe wrote about their decluttering project this week. And Mrs. Groovy shared a post about the expenses related to storage units. I’ve called about the prices of storage units already – but I want to avoid the “chump” label too! We decided on something else…more on that soon!

Finally, I want to try to highlight a new blog each week. This week’s new to me blog is Life Zemplified. Amy’s “About page” shares that her blog focuses on helping people “live a healthier, simpler and richer life” through simplifying food, fitness and finances. We’re definitely trying out some recipes – Cajun Sweet Potato fries anyone?

I made the decision to leave my full-time job last spring. As much as I enjoyed teaching at the college level, my husband and I finally accepted that we had enough. We are Financially Independent and it was my chance to stop reading about FIRE and actually Retire Early. And defining what your early retirement will look like is the beauty of being FIRE’d. So why am I writing a post about one more year syndrome?

My plan was to retire from full-time work, not all work. My husband is retired and works about 5-10 hours a week on our rental properties. And 5-10 hours per week of online teaching was still in my plan. I still have five years to go before I can collect my pension. Online teaching counts as service credit and I need to earn 3 more years of credit to reach my maximum pension level. It would be crazy to give up online teaching at this point in time! $15,000 a year for the rest of my life crazy!

Downshifting was an easy transition last spring. We had plenty of things planned for the extra hours available each day! But two months into earlyretirement, my plan was challenged. A former colleague called and offered me an interim two-month administrative position and I accepted.

And that decision brought on a case of OMY – one more year syndrome.

Two-months has quickly turned into a year. Paychecks are rolling in and a boost in my service credit and final average salary for my pension are on target. And my son is finishing up high school.

It’s been a very normal year.

We’ve also paid off a rental property, visited our vacation condo and padded the kids’ college accounts. Even though the extra money I’m earning isn’t necessary, it has been really nice. And I’m afraid I might miss it. So why not work just one more year?

And that’s how it happens. Just OMY….

I started calculating my salary, service credit and the impact on my pension for working one more year. We could pay off another rental property. And if I lived to be 85 – that one year of work would be worth about $200,000.

A flexible, location independent lifestyle wasn’t that important last spring because my son was still going to be in high school. Since he will be heading off to college this fall, I needed to rethink my goals for next year.

Here are my new end goals (changes in bold)– ranked by importance:

Maximize My Health/Wellness – Extremely Important (EI)

Create a Flexible, Location Independent Lifestyle – Very Important (VI)

Commit to Grow/Strengthen Relationships – Important (I)

Continue Personal Growth – Important (I)

Increase Wealth – Somewhat Important (I) *meeting financial obligations is a given

Once I revisited my goals, the decision was clear. And I didn’t even need to create a new decision-matrix to prove it to myself. One more year of full-time work was not going to allow for the flexible, location independent lifestylemy husband and I really want. And that is very important to us now – even more important to us than increasing our wealth.

I’m cured of OMY syndrome.

But I also want to share four key things we learned and came to terms with this year too. Learning and helping others are both habits I am really focused on building this year! Hopefully this deeper thinking and sharing will help prevent my OMY syndrome from returning!

Kids – Well, they aren’t kids anymore. All of our children are technically, adults. Our jobs as parents will never end, but our roles are shifting too. It’s not easy, but we are working to embrace that shift and focus on our needs and wants – in addition to theirs.

Work – I have no plan to work full-time again, but I know I will work. And I get job offers every week. But I’ll be very selective now too. I can also try out some new ideas of my own that may generate some income. I’m embracing the upside of having a lot more time in my future!

Time – Between the two of us, we’ve been on more than 100 trips around the sun… And the older we get, the faster those trips seem to feel! Simply put, we’re not getting any younger.

Health – We are thankful for our health and we work hard to keep ourselves healthy too! But we know our health can change at any minute. We went on vacation last month and came home to learn our neighbor had died suddenly. He was 64 and planned to retire next month. We are not going to live in fear of dying, but at this point in our lives…we go to more funerals than weddings.

OMY syndrome is very real for some people – and I experienced it this year. And I can easily see how one more year could turn into five or ten more years too… Without a clear plan and revisiting your end goals often, “normal” gets real comfortable. And days of work can turn into years of work before you know it.

We think we’re making a smart decision that will “stick” this time! Hopefully the effort we’ve put in reflecting on and revisiting our end goals will maximize our satisfaction with this decision, while minimizing regrets.

Next week, I’ll explain the financial part of our retirement plan with some fun charts and graphs. I clearly need more time learning how to make them – but I am having fun learning how to do that too! We have a gap to fill for the next five years if we want to make good use of our time! Stop by and check out our plan! And as always, thanks for reading.

It’s an “on the road” edition of the Saturday Share Day! On Wednesday, I wrote a post showing some of the travel hacks we used to make this week’s trip more affordable. It made a few readers dizzy just trying to figure out the hotel part (and I used to feel the same way!)

I’ve experimented the last few months with Raise.com (buying discounted gift cards) and BeFrugal.com (a cash-back site). I’ve saved some money with those sites (about 25%), but we’ve really saved the most money with our Southwest Companion pass and with Chase Ultimate Reward points. If you are just getting started with travel hacking, there are MANY websites that can help. We’ve been doing this for four years – and I still feel like a beginner in many ways!

I was able to catch up on some great blogs this week without having to go to work! Enjoy!

Speaking of vacations, check out Jim at Route to Retire’s plan to visit Panama. This isn’t just a vacation though! They are considering this trip to be an investment in their future because they are considering moving there too. Check out the plan (and the costs) related to the trip that may change their lives!

There were a few great real estate posts this week too. One of Finance Superhero’s side gigs is being a realtor. This week he’s sharing nine inside secrets many realtors won’t share.

Mrs Frugalwoods shared a really detailed post on how they converted their home in Cambridge, MA into a rental property. They totally scored when it came to finding a great property manager!

And Steve at Steveonomics rejects the idea of owning real estate. I agree with Steve that many people don’t understand the commitment. I’ve owned properties since I was 24, but I also started a job then that few people left until they retired. Steve makes some great points about the freedom he has as a renter.

ESI Money recently wrote a post that answered a reader’s question about lifestyle choices that went against the grain of those around you. As I read through the post, I connected with many of the choices and decisions ESI and his family have made to reach financial independence. “You will need to do the things others won’t or can’t.” So true!

Check out Mr. 1500’s passionate post from this week. It’s definitely worth a read. And it’s related to these two seemingly contradictory lines:

You should structure your finances so that you can leave work at the earliest possibility.

Work is the key to happiness. A life without work is hell.

Mrs. Our Next Life also wrote a great post that pushes people to think beyond FIRE. There are some great comments on the post and it is definitely something I need to think more about!

Amber Tree Leaves shifted his thinking about FIRE in his post No More FI for me. FI as a means to a wonderful end – happiness. I love the graphic he created too

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